As an artist, I have had to create my works wherever I could find a place and space, a kitchen table, dining room table, or a tiny spare room filled with household tools and storage. No place was ideal or inspiring. To make things even more difficult, my handcrafted art can be quite a messy affair. I carve signs, make custom wood doors and windows, and more. I was often wading through wood shavings and dragging them through the house. I resolved to find a solution. A Flexible Solution. Most of the existing tiny house designs look forced architecturally to me. Road legal requirements dictate maximum heights, widths, and lengths, and people dictate door and interior heights and access. What I personally needed was an attractive but utilitarian design with large access doors, ample windows, room for a bench, desk, drawing table, and tool storage. If the design was historically based and different, then all the better. My first research stop was in Europe, where I discovered shepherds' huts. They were much smaller than a tiny house and designed to roll across a meadow, not down the interstate. I also discovered they were very lightly built in weight and materials, using lumber half the size of that used in the least expensive shed here. I live in snow country, where heavy snow and below-zero temperatures are common, so smaller framing was simply not going to work. Though attractive and historic, they just did not look right on a modern trailer, and they were not native American architecture, so I kept looking. Switching Tracks! The solution, as it turned out, was almost, but not exactly, a 19th-century narrow gauge railroad boxcar. A standard or common boxcar has two large openings with sliding doors. One opening could be framed for a giant window, and the other would allow my larger projects (or crowds!) in and out. In vintage narrow gauge boxcars, it was also quite common to add windows. The oldest of these cars could even have doors in each end for mixed trains. I finally found my solution. Maybe it will work for you too! Results I was fortunate, to be able to build, for and with a friend of mine, two boxcars and two cabooses from my designs. One boxcar is outfitted as a pub, the other as a retiree's getaway. One caboose is setup as a self- contained RV, and the other is a simple office space. You can see the build process and the finished product in our custom builds section. If you need a more inspirational and creative place, maybe a tiny boxcar or caboose is all you need.